Windows install has problems. Guido asked that I use this newsgroup to discus further

[Barry Scott]

THis is Guido's reply to my comments that tcl80.dll is not found
by IDLE on a default installation.

> > >  Running "IDLE (Python GUI)" reports that tcl80.dll is
> > >  not in my path then the shell comes up and I can
> > >  use Tkinter from the shell.
> > >
> > >  Just in case this might be involved my Windows NT system
> > >  is on G: not C:.
> >
> > To solve this one, I think you'll have to edit your autoexec.bat to
> > add the Tcl directory (containing that DLL) to the PATH variable.  For
> > various reasons I do not believe it is a good idea to copy the Tcl/Tk
> > DLL files into the Python directory, nor do I think it is possible to
> > reliably edit autoexec.bat in the installer.  Instead, Tkinter.py
> > imports a hack module, FixTk.py, which searches for tcl80.dll in a few
> > places and then patches the PATH environment variable of the running
> > process, but this is not failsafe either. :-(
>
>  It would be nice if I did not have to edit the path manually.
>  Suggest that the install edits the path or you use the registry
>  to find the tcl80.dll image.

I wish I could.  The installer is very stupid.  Windows sucks :-(

>  1) The PATH is a registry key on NT. I don't have an autoexec.bat,
>  isn't for MS-DOS compatibility only these days?

No, it's still needed on Windows 98 and 98.

>  The machines PATH is in
>
>  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
>
>  2a) I notice that HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TclShell\shell\open\command
>  contains a default value which is how to run wish. e.g.
>
>   G:\PROGRA~1\Tcl\bin\wish80.exe "%1"
>
>  tcl80.dll is in the same dir as wish80.exe.
>
>  2b)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDlls
>  lists all the shared files on the system. There is an value
>  "G:\Program Files\Tcl\bin\tcl80.dll" with the date 0x0000001 against it.
>
>  2c) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Scriptics\Tcl\8.0
>  contains the default value field with the data G:\PROGRA~1\Tcl
>
>  The DLL being in data + "\tcl80.dll".
>
>    BArry
Please take it up on the newsgroup -- there are many people with
similar interests and more understanding of Windows than I have!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)